Follow along with my WorldEmber progress!

These resources will help you keep track of my progress through this month-long marathon challenge:

• Haly’s Official WE Progress Report — each participant gets a page that automatically collects their author information and all WE-eligible articles across all worlds into a single, shareable package.
• Haly’s WorldEmber on Argentii Index — an on-the-fly journal page and handy sidebar displaying only new Argentii WE-eligible articles.

“I’m Not in the Mood.”

Tell me if this seems at all familiar. You’ve agreed to a creative project over a long timeline. It has had its ups and downs, but overall, you’re satisfied with your progress, and you’ve even been having fun.

But then, along comes a mood. It settles on your like cold, damp laundry and gives you a definite ick in the back of your throat. You want to write. You need to write. But you’re not in the mood to write. It’s not coming, the words, the magic that you know your fingers and mind are capable of.

Writing is all you want, it’s how you dream of spending your time, endless time to just sit and write. Except, of course, when you’re reading. And now that you’ve carved out these precious moments from all of your other commitments and responsibilities…you just aren’t feeling it. Because you’re in a mood and you fear that mood affecting your writing.

Well…so the fuck what?

Work that Mood

Look, making art is never the wrong answer. And if you’ve been making art for more than five minutes, then you know and understand it’s the quickest way to get over any troubling mood or riot of emotional turmoil.

“But Haly, what if the mood I’m in doesn’t match what I want to write?”

Then you make what you want to write match the mood you’re in. Get in touch with your feelings, name your emotion, and then write a piece of your story where you want your audience to feel like you’re feeling right then!

Need your hero to have an argument with her mother? Write it while you’re angry. Have a hero who is experiencing grief or depression? Write it while you’re sad. And do this with your pleasant emotions, too! If you need to write something funny, then get in a playful mood.

“Haly, this isn’t The Sims 4. You can’t just put yourself into a mood.”

Yes, you can. Like, you really can.

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In the Mood to Work

Are you honestly telling me that you’ve never started a fight with your partner or a friend or a buddy in your writing group, just to get into an arguing headspace so that you can write that climax with the big-bad-evil-guy (BBEG)?!

No, seriously, it’s not just me, right?

I will walk up to Hippie and literally say, “Hey, I need to argue for a bit. Start a fight with me.” Or I’ll ask if I can start a fight with him. And then we’ll pick a topic that we know will just instantly bring up 15 years of re-hashing. And one of us will make…that comment.

If you’ve ever been in a long-term relationship (more than 2 consecutive years), then you know exactly the sort of comment I mean. The really painful ones. The ones that dig deep and sting. The ones that never, ever get solved. The ones that are hundy-p guaranteed to start a fight.

Yanno, things like, “Enterprise isn’t real Star Trek,” or, “Die Hard is a Christmas movie.”

Wrapping the Day

What are some of your favorite techniques for changing your mood? Do you exercise? Meditate? Engage with a different artform (such as music, painting, dance, etc.)? Let me know in the comments!!

As I write this, I am sitting at 23,612 new words of world-building toward my 50,000-word goal.